2020 Happenings! (BOSS Strikes Back)

[jirodreamsofdank]

Maybe just stop playing with artificial scarcity?

[manymanyhaha]

Yep, the only people who will care for them not to make more are the flippers

[01010111]

Maybe just stop playing with artificial scarcity?

This ^

The Chase Bliss pedal format’s really flexible and fun. Their most successful pedal was designed by two other builders. If they just licensed builds for the Generation Loss/Fuzz Factory/etc. and kept selling them they’d be easy successes. If the demand’s there, there’s no need for this small-batch, limited run nonsense.

[MrNovember]

Maybe just stop playing with artificial scarcity?

This ^

The Chase Bliss pedal format’s really flexible and fun. Their most successful pedal was designed by two other builders. If they just licensed builds for the Generation Loss/Fuzz Factory/etc. and kept selling them they’d be easy successes. If the demand’s there, there’s no need for this small-batch, limited run nonsense.

I agree with this. I also really don't get it; if there's demand for something, why wouldn't you just keep building and selling it? Isn't that how business works?

[manymanyhaha]

Maybe they owe money to the musical gear equivalent of bookies?

[coupleonapkins]

It could be a scarcity of parts (doubtful, but that happened to the Spectre, except that one became too expensive to build/make a profit off of/waning interest from people in general), though I do believe that Joel & company have good intentions at play. They seem to love the short-run/exclusives for the collaboration and work involved as an act of joy that can also pay for itself, rather than issue a new colorway of the same boxes every other month (insert your FV-1 flavor of the month here). However, it's finally come to the point wherein the flippers are now in control of who gets to buy or sell their pedals, and at least Joel, who has said similar things before, may finally be getting the gist of what's going on for people who actually want to pay and play their pedals for less than a small ransom.

Maybe they owe money to the musical gear equivalent of bookies?

[dubkitty]

"getting the gist" =/= eschewing a model where deliberate scarcity allows ridiculous pricing *and* guarantees sellouts of everything they produce. John Hall isn't going to build more Rickenbackers, either, for the same reason; they can keep demand artificially high by restricting supply, jack prices to the max, and eliminate meaningful competition from the used market because used items generally go for 70% or more of new prices (though in CBA's case it's more like 300%). great for the owners, shite for everyone else. but then, that's America's model in general, so it shouldn't surprise that music-implement builders also build on those corrupt foundations.

[manymanyhaha]

Definitely not doubting intentions. Thought I should say.

I think also there has been a serious dearth in new pedals this year, I'm sure the pent-up demand is also a bit of surprise. I know I'm looking for some new sounds.

[dubkitty]

i emphatically doubt their intentions.

[Muse FTW]

I’m a huge fan of CBA, but I definitely feel like they’re losing the plot a bit with some of their tactics.

I love the collaboration pedals they’ve done - with MOOD as the crowning achievement - but the limited nature on some releases like Gen Loss and Ayahuasca moves us closer to sneakerhead territory - aka scalpers’ paradise. The emphasis on dumping the YouTube videos all at once right as the pedals are available for sale is pretty lame, too. Given how quickly they sell I feel like most people who end up getting one just take a gamble on it, whether or not they actually hear it beforehand.

I get it, they’re a brand that many musicians trust/are inspired by their designs, just like I enjoy them. But I really dislike the trend of “Gotta have it before it’s gone forever”. If it has to be a limited run, have a pre-order window and then just fulfill whoever gets in during the window.

I similarly dislike the shock CBA shows when they sell out so quickly. At this point, there’s no need to be surprised about it. They’re a high quality brand and they tease their product well. Even if they had some anti-scalper measures in place, they’d probably move through their inventory for this release in a few hours.

Most of their stuff sells out. The only reason the CXM 1978 didn’t sell out yet is because the price is so high.

And fuck the dentists on TGP who don’t want more runs just so they feel good about their investment that they can flip for a profit if the pedal doesn’t fix their impotence.

[dubkitty]

given their level of production it might be more accurate. to say that "a few dozen musicians trust."

[coupleonapkins]

The Youtube dumps are all part & parcel of the marketing of these things, but it only fuels the dentists' fires even more (never thought I'd say that phrase again)

i emphatically doubt their intentions.

I know it's difficult to gauge someone's sincerity when it comes to any marketplace wherein goods are sold for profit, but Joel has expressed in the past the growing pains of the whole operation, one that is still shifting hand-built-by-a-human & technologically interesting devices when the opposite could be true. I can't imagine an Electro-Harmonix type of compromised situation (boards populated overseas with cheap components, and thereby great ideas with poor QC) for Chase Bliss, but maybe he'll choose to go the Earthquaker direction (expand the operation, stay local, keep humans employed, maybe keep some sanity, etc.), or something like that.

But most importantly, I do regret not buying a purple Starby shirt when I had the chance

[jirodreamsofdank]

The Korg Opsix seems pretty interesting. I don't need another keyboard, hope they do it in a desktop format.

[mcatano]

"getting the gist" =/= eschewing a model where deliberate scarcity allows ridiculous pricing *and* guarantees sellouts of everything they produce. John Hall isn't going to build more Rickenbackers, either, for the same reason; they can keep demand artificially high by restricting supply, jack prices to the max, and eliminate meaningful competition from the used market because used items generally go for 70% or more of new prices (though in CBA's case it's more like 300%). great for the owners, shite for everyone else. but then, that's America's model in general, so it shouldn't surprise that music-implement builders also build on those corrupt foundations.

It's also great for the workers who have stable employment that isn't subject to the whims of the market.

I'm assuming that CBA stuff is assembled by CBA and they're not being shipped pre-populated boards or whatever from overseas. They can do batch work to speed things up but at the end of the day they can only make so many pedals of any type in a given block of time. Their business model seems to be steady sales of their core products with these occasional huge flashes of interest in new releases. So they can either burn everyone out by making them work double shifts or whatever and have QC/etc suffer, they can rely on short term employees to get them through these busier periods (enter the roving bands of migrant pedal assemblers), they can limit the number of units of any given theing they make at any given point in time (what they seem to be doing), or they can just make one pedal only until supplies run out and just let everything else go out of stock (aka the cat and laser pointer model).

Like it sucks that there aren't magically enough pedals to go around all the time, but I think there's more to it than just artificially creating scarcity to drive the secondary market so they can feel good about themselves.

This is basically the fundamental problem of small manufacturing businesses—at a certain point you can't scale past your current capacity without significant capital investment and a subsequent increase in output/sales by like an order of magnitude. This is where outsourcing and subcontracting starts to make sense for a lot of companies. It's also where people should start doing the math about increasing prices vs losing customers (ie, if I raise my prices 25% will I lose 25% of my customers? If no, then raise your prices). That seems to be where CBA is headed, rather than focusing on streamlining, simplifying designs, and trying to build out the way EQD has done over the past few years.

Capitalism is very good at conflating 'wants' for 'needs' and making us all feel like we're entitled to own stuff. Having tried to make a living building things for other people at one point, I have a LOT of sympathy for anyone trying to run a boutique manufacturing business. It's awful.

[tremolo3]

I thought CBA was Canadian.